NAU Faculty Awarded NSF Grant in Ethics Education

Northern Arizona University (NAU) Associate Professor of
Philosophy Jeffrey Downard is the principal investigator of a multidisciplinary
project that has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The purpose of the three-year project is to
develop and test a model for graduate education that incorporates ethics into
the curriculum for Master’s degree students in NAU’s Climate Science and
Solutions and Environmental Sciences programs.

The NAU team from the College of Arts and Letters and the
College of Engineering, Forestry, and Natural Sciences are partnering with
e-Learning and the Office of Academic Assessment to develop and test course
modules, screencasts, and videos that will help students draw on moral
principles and ideals when deliberating about environmental issues and
communicating with the public. At the completion of the curriculum, students
will be expected to:

distinguish
among scientific, ethical, and public-policy components of climate
controversies;

articulate
and reflect on competing moral principles and their own perspectives; and

develop
entry points of discourse based on shared values.

“Graduate students in environmental sciences should work
through the same kinds of questions and problems that practicing scientists
face,” says Downard. “This leads to skills and the confidence needed to
navigate the intersection of ethics, public policy, and environmental science.”

Other lead members of the NAU team include Deborah Huntzinger,
Assistant Professor of Climate Sciences; Erik Nielsen, Assistant Professor,
School of Earth Sciences and Environmental Sustainability; and Andrea Houchard,
Director, Philosophy in the Public Interest, who also teaches in NAU’s
philosophy department.

The NAU team is collaborating with teams from the
University Of Montana and University of Colorado-Boulder; the latter team has
been awarded a related NSF grant to create a series of documentary videos about
environmental issues around the Colorado Plateau that will be used in public
discussions and shown at the Museum of Northern Arizona.